Choosing Gold

I wrote this for an anthology of writings by Shluchos, Chabad female emissaries, since I am a proud member of that most incredible ( can't find a less cliched word, sorry) global sisterhood. 

I'm not sure my opinions represent the views held by every Chabad woman, but this is my truth. Enjoy. 

 

Choosing Gold

written December 2014

What is it with us and our many children?

Of all the ways in which my life differs from my friends here in Manhattan, it differs most visibly in this. And of all the things I share with my Shluchos sisters, I feel the bond strongest in the sizeable families we have in common.

I write this about a month away from delivering baby number five, G-d willing. I've had three under three, four under seven, and I'm about to go for five under 10. It places me firmly in the “religious woman with lots of kids” category, a place quite distinct from, say, “jetset celebrity with large blended brood.” It's a lot. It's a big family, in a city where “childfree” is a celebrated and common choice, and neighbors bond most frequently over their pets.

The comments, which I won't detail here, come freely. I smile and thank strangers and friends for their concern and well wishes. But if I could stop and chat longer (let's be honest: if one or more of my children wasn't pulling at my skirt or wind-tossed wig), here's what I might share:

Dear stranger/friend, we share so many interests. Like you,  I love this city we live in, its literature and culture and diversity; its independent spirit. In this matter, in the choice I make for more children and hassled, harried decades of raising them, we differ. And so I want you to understand a few things about it.

Firstly, my body is just like any other woman's. It's not a baby machine (a congregant actually called my friend that, on learning of her fourth pregnancy!); it does not pop or otherwise churn out babies. Pregnancy is hard; it's annoying and painful and exhausting and nauseating and all the other things it is for any woman. I might not complain to you , but it's a pain all the same. And yet I go for it, again each time. “So good to see you!” I greeted a congregant last Yom Kippur. “You too!” she said, “I come here every year and every year you are pregnant with another one!” I've been visibly pregnant for perhaps one Yom Kippur of the last eight, but I understand; it seems that way to her. It's part of the whole package: the Rabbi husband, the wig, the modest dress and the children trailing behind. It's how they see us. It's who we are.

So here's the second thing I want you to know: This is a choice I've made, and continue to make. The Rebbetzin, the wig, the whole package- and, especially, the pregnancy. The commitment to the large family, the deviation from the common understanding in this society that two is a perfectly sized family, three is bustling and four is more than enough. This choice... it's not a result of naivete or some sort of mandate handed to me by a Rabbi. It's a reflection of a different perspective on having children, and what families are, and what getting married and building one means.

I can't speak for earlier generations, but it may surprise some to know that, of my friends and contemporaries, many, even those who are well on track for truly large families, avail themselves of contraceptive methods and are making a conscious and deliberate choice each time they go for that next baby. And I want to share a little bit of why I make it.

For one thing, large families are so.much.fun. Not for the adults, necessarily. For the parents, it's joy intermingled with hard work, accumulated sleep loss and inevitable financial stress. But for the kids! Growing up as part of a large family means there's always a party going on somewhere. There are family jokes and wiser older siblings and exciting- incredibly thrilling- events like meeting a brand new baby who turns into a rollicking two year old who brings down the house and becomes everyone's favorite plaything, until the next one comes around. It means big, fun laughing dinners and family memories and holidays and birthdays and weddings and so much more.  My eight siblings are the greatest gift my parents have given me, a gift that keeps on giving, with in-laws who become close friends and nieces and nephews to delight in. Our family is not all rosy; there's petty infighting and rivalry and long standing differences. But there's love, too, and so much laughter. We go off the pill each time and we know what's coming- the chaos, the bills, the bedlam. But we know the love, too, and the laughter. We know the joys. We choose those joys.

And then there's the question of how much joy is enough.

“I hope you have a boy so you can stop!” said a complete stranger to my rounded belly as I held my first little girl-- a reference, I guess, to my Rabbi husband and a presumed understanding of the halakhic discussions surrounding contraception. What a wish. And what a sad reflection of the value our society places on having children.

Because unlike common values, and all hyperbole aside, I see a new baby as the greatest of all gifts one could possibly receive. More than a beautiful home, or more money or a perfect figure, or even- dare I say it- personal satisfaction. I learned this from the Rebbe, who would often share the biblical life story of Chana, mother of the prophet Samuel. She was an influential woman, the Rebbe would say, successful, happily married, accomplishing great things. Why then did she pray so desperately for a child? Her husband, in the biblical telling, could not understand it either. And the Rebbe would explain that she understood that nothing she would achieve, with all her wealth of talent, would compare in value to bringing a new life, a precious and irrevocable fount of possibility, into the world. I learned this from the Rebbe but I understood it when I saw my first child, whose preciousness took my breath away. The moments in which I met each of my children for the first time have been, without any exaggeration, the greatest moments of my life.

Now, I think most, if not all, women feel that way. You don't need to be religious to feel awe at the miracle of new life. What sets us apart, my friends and I, is perhaps that we benefit from the perspective that carries that emotion further, so that we see that there really is nothing that compares to that moment in value. Not anything I can acquire, not even anything I can achieve. If you see it that way, things look different.

A dear friend, a Chabad shlucha in a neighborhood that is home to more ‘one-percenters’ than probably anywhere else in the country, shared with me her community's astonished reactions to her eighth pregnancy. “Seriously,” she said to me, “do I question their need for their sixth car? Or their fourth home? So you collect cars and we collect kids! We like them!”

And we do. And if God gives them to us, and we think we can handle it, we take them. And yes, we need to know that we can handle them. But when you view another child as we do, it's harder to turn that gift down. That's not to say that there aren't some days we might want to place one or two of them in temporary (safe!) quarters, somewhere far away so we can sleep. Every mother has those moments, and sheitel or no sheitel, all the moms I know have them too. But, buoyed by a value system that remembers that first moment of joy and the certainty that nothing could be more precious than this gift of new life, my friends and I come to see the blessings in the chaos; the light in the endless laundry. On good days, with the strength of a good man at our side, we can even see the face of G-d in the little people in our homes, in their squabbles and their journeys and their laughter.

“Not everything that shines is Gold,” goes the old Yiddish saying, and sometimes, when I meet up with a friend, heavy with another pregnancy, or worn out from the intense demands of raising small children, I think of that line. She does not need to explain to me, nor I to her, why she has chosen to do this again, why she's not “done” after two or three. Like her, I know the stress, I know the cost, I know it's really, really hard. But then there's the rest of it: the laughter, the joy, the unlimited possibility that is each new life and the gifts they will, with G-d's help, bring to our world.

To me, that's gold. I choose the gold.

Thanks to my dear friend Chanala K for her valuable editorial suggestions on this piece.